Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/54

 He was so excited that without an apology he almost tore the mirror from out of my hand. “Quickly, before the sun goes down!” he cried anxiously and turned the face of the mirror towards the sun, throwing its reflection on the opposite wall, which was plunged in deep shadow.

And then amazement laid hold of me, and I hesitated to believe my eyes: for on the paper sliding-screen there appeared in the golden circle of light the dancing figure of a woman with arms outstreched, holding in her hand the sacred, a golden, burning shadow, looking like the heart of a flame. An unspeakably delicate and mystic figure, the nudity of which was only a suggestion, enveloped in fire

“But this is surely impossible “I finally managed to whisper; but as yet I could not take my eyes off from that charming, mysterious vision. It seemed to me as if in the screen a loophole had been opened into glowing depths of time and space, so to say, and that in a little while I would see before me in life-size that charming O-Take whose soul had been conjured into the magic mirror; that from out of the abyss from which we assume there is no return my companion was calling back her whom doubtlessly he himself loved and whose secret he had learned in some inexplicable manner. A strange excitement came upon me, and extraordinary agitation.

But at that instant the sun went down, the golden circle disappeared from the wall, and the vision seemed to me still more unbelievable. I turned to the engineer with a mute question. He handed me the mirror. There was nothing noteworthy on its face, except that it was slightly convex. I looked into it and saw my own awe-stricken face. I turned it over; the back was ungainly, uneven, and covered with patina, as I had observed before. It was clear to me that I would look in vain to the mirror for an explanation of that mysterious phenomenon, evidently belying the laws of nature.

“May I trust my eyes, may I believe that I really saw what I saw? Or did it only seem to me?” I said at length in an avowedly quivering voice. I was undeniably excited, and it seemed unnecessary to conceal my excitement.

He laughed. “If you had read what Professors Ayrton and Perry wrote about the magic mirrors of Japan in the Transactions of the Royal Society, if I remember rightly in volume twenty-six, or the article by the same authors in the twenty-second volume of the Philosophical Magazine, you would not be so amazed, though even then you would have the right to be somewhat mysti-